Piano Solo
by Lothe
Summary: [Ch. 4 up!] Continuation fic, a sequel to Blue Eyes in a Little Girl. The chaos of the Time of Trials is past, but now things seem more unsettled than ever...
1. Chapter 1

**Credits**

_Neon Genesis Evangelion_ (_Shin Seiki Evangelion_) and all related indicia are copyright © Studio Gainax. This work is fanfiction, and uses elements of this copyright without permission. Its author makes neither profit from the work nor claim to own any of the elements, and survives on a wing, a prayer, and constant supplication to the goodwill of Gainax not to sue him.

The story itself is of my own creation.

**Introduction**

_Piano Solo_ (don't ask about the name...) is a continuation fiction to _Evangelion_. Although it is set up so it can stand on its own, it borrows elements from my previous work, _Blue Eyes in a Little Girl_, and essentially picks up where that story left off. If you have never read that story, I would advise reading it, since the conditions at the end of _Blue Eyes_ are subtly different from the conclusion of episode 24 of the series. But even if you have never read that piece, _Piano Solo_ should still be comprehensible (inasfar as _Evangelion_ is ever comprehensible) and enjoyable.

**3/10/03**:  I apologize for the unforgivably long delay between the posting of chapters 2 and 3.  First I was tinkering with the story, then I let the fic lie fallow for a while, then I tinkered with the story a little more… and time just rolled on.  My bad, and I apologize.  I won't promise that the same thing won't happen again in the future, since I have a policy of not making promises I can't keep, but I'll try to make sure the delay is shorter.  Again, sorry.

~

**Piano Solo  
Chapter 1**

_The fire-ravaged beast emerges from the conflagration. His name is Gargant, earned by the coals of his eyes and the black rictus of his lips, his fame wrought with the hammer of his ferocity on the anvil of his enemies' lives._

—

_            'Do not fear to kill me, Ikari Shinji-kun.'_

_Nagisa Kaworu…_

_            '…loves Ikari Shinji-kun.'_

_            'You are not the one to die, Ikari Shinji-kun.'_

_            'Because of you, I am happy…'_

—

"…Ikari Shinji-kun. Ikari-kun?"

"What?" Shinji looked up from his reverie, staring around at the drab classroom and the teacher calling roll. "Oh…I'm here."

How long ago had Kaworu died? It seemed like it must be so long. And yet, barely any time had passed at all. And already, the pilots were back in school, back to their respective façades of—now genuine attempts at—normal lives.

Shinji watched the walls of the classroom, and the teacher's desk, all the same color, the same shape and size and proportions they had been in all his time there. All his time, which had begun with the coming of the first Angel, the first call to action from his father Gendo, the first battle—the first blood shed.

—

_Is not the moon the same?  
This spring  
The spring of old?  
Only this body of mine  
Is the same body…_

_            —Ariwara no Narihira, _Ise Monogatari

—

He could not imagine—could not imagine—all that time ago, which really was so little time at all. And after that first attack, after that first killing. How much more killing had he done? How many others had died _because of him?_ He shook his head as though to clear it, but the images would not disperse. Each frame, each second of stained and tainted life and unlife, burned forever into his memory, not ever to be purged but instead to remain as a testament, until the Last Day when his mind was played out before all humanity, and he was shown for the murderer he was.

The teacher had finished his roll and moved on to other things, but none of them registered with Shinji. His class was short so many people—because of him. So many who had moved away because of the threats of life in Tokyo-3, or who had been inadvertently killed in Angel attacks. And Toji. _Suzuhara Toji_, who was still in the hospital, who had nearly died at Shinji's hands.

And why? And _why?_

For _him_.

****

Sohryu Asuka Langely sat up in her bed, suddenly and violently sick of the hospital scenery, even the seemingly-picturesque view of the lake outside her window. It was the only thing of any color she had had to look at for several weeks now, and it no longer pleased her to sit in silent introspection about the ordeal she had survived.

Whenever she could talk to a doctor she would ask when she would be released, but the answer was always, 'a little longer'; the doctors now seemed overly cautious, not having to rush the pilot back to functionality so she could pilot her Eva.

_So why would they want to keep me here? The only reason they even wanted me alive was for that thing._

She looked dejectedly out the window, across the vast expanse of bare earth and water. She remembered the shockwaves of Unit-00's destruction, appreciable to her even hundreds of meters from the blast point. When she had learned what happened she had been stunned, and even more so to find that Rei was not only alive but in very stable physical condition.

A nurse arrived at the ever-open doorway, her footsteps momentarily drawing Asuka away from her thoughts. She came in and nodded to the girl as though she were only accessory to the chart the woman was checking, scrawling numbers on pad as she went.

Without a word to the patient the nurse replaced the chart and went out again, her steps receding down the hall.

Asuka returned her eyes to the window, but her thoughts were gone.

****

Shinji walked despondently out of school. Another day past when he had learned nothing for want of concentration; another day past without Asuka, who was still in the hospital, and without the consolation of Ayanami's presence, for she was in attendance but since her miraculous recovery had been even more reticent than before.

"Hey, Shinji!" Aida Kensuke ran up alongside him, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and trying in vain to keep his frazzled blond hair out of his eyes. Shinji looked up at him briefly, and then back down to the ground before his feet.

"Don't feel like talking today, huh?" Aida said, speaking himself a little too quickly. "I understand. Some days are like that, y'know?" In fact, Aida had noticed that every day seemed to be like that for Ikari Shinji, who had returned to school only recently. Through a few deft computer hacks Kensuke had managed to learn that all seventeen Angels were supposedly dead, rendering the Evangelion project complete as well.

His first reaction had been to be crushed under the notion that he had now lost every chance of piloting one of the heroic machines. It was followed quickly by the guilty recollection that his friend Toji _had_ gotten that chance, and it had all but killed him. And further, the thought of what that chance had done to Shinji, who had always been quiet but now was nearly silent, and Ayanami, who for all intents and purposes existed only to herself, and even Asuka, whom he had not seen in nearly a month, and of whom Shinji was heavily reluctant to speak.

He thought about his knowledge of things military, remembering that a great many people who had lived through war desired never to speak of it, that many never could for shell shock and nightmares.

And so they walked in silence, for one awkward and for the other, habitual.

****

She was not content. The death of the seventeenth Angel had thrown everything into turmoil for everyone. It seemed like it should have been the final mark of peace, but instead it had caused only confusion. All of NERV had very suddenly lost its way, having no visible enemy to battle.

As for Rei, she no longer knew what to do with herself.

_I was born—created—to pilot Eva,_ she mused. _And now the threat Eva was born—created—to destroy is gone. And so…_

Life had become a series of motions for her now, one day segueing into the next in one unbroken stream of time. Though the pilots had not been officially released from NERV's employ, they had not been called there for some time, either. There had been final batteries of physical and mental testing, and Asuka was still in the hospital ward, but it seemed that for all practical purposes they were now free to live their lives.

Except Rei, for whom NERV _was_ life.

_And here I am, tossed aside now that I am no longer useful…only a little doll, to be used and thrown away._

Nobody remarked her silence anymore.

****

Misato sighed and looked around the NERV base. She was there because it was still her job, still her workplace, but there was now so little work to be done. The tech staff, small enough to begin with, had dropped to nearly half its number in regular attendance. She had not seen Ritsuko since her destruction of the dummy system and had no idea where she was—either dead, or rotting her way there in some out-of-the-way prison cell.

Commander Ikari had made himself scarce recently; she had not seen his imposing visage for nearly a week. Even the normally officious Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki was nowhere to be found. Misato imagined they had quite some administrative cleanup to perform, and didn't envy them the task.

She herself had to be content with issuing a few cursory orders here and there, for there was simply nothing for her to say. She had served chiefly as battle commander, and now the battles were over. She still saw Shinji each night, although neither of them talked much any more. She gathered that the death of the last Angel had struck him a hard blow, although she was at a loss to say quite why.

Meanwhile, Asuka was in the hospital for what seemed an interminable amount of time. To Misato, it seemed only the doctors knew what sign of good health they were waiting for, and had no interest in telling anyone else what it was.

And Rei—Misato had not seen Rei for what seemed like a very long time.

****

Ikari Gendo sat in a darkened room, only his desk glowing faintly in the pitch. Around him, surrounding him, were other desks, with other men. The council SEELE, NERV's conniving masters. The sub-commander Fuyutsuki stood at Gendo's shoulder, looking out over the assembly with his characteristic grimness.

"We have been informed of Tabris's death," a slender man remarked. "Quite…impressive."

Gendo merely nodded, his eyes hidden by his spectacles.

"But we have also been informed that he nearly touched off Third Impact," the man continued. "That is less promising news."

Gendo said nothing, no reaction visible in his face or manner.

"We wonder if this is not grounds for the dissolution of NERV."

Finally Gendo spoke.

"It seems NERV has completed its task…and thereby extinguished its own usefulness. Would you not dissolve it anyway?" Despite his words no fear or discontent could be detected in his voice, only the facts of the matter.

The slender man smirked. "You are not altogether useless now that the Angels have been defeated. No indeed…there are other applications for such a powerful organization."

Gendo resumed his silence, but Fuyutsuki knew he would be thinking less of his own organization's power and more of the ever-dwindling budget allotted it.

Lorenz Keel's deep voice rumbled past the other man's proclamation. "We will not eliminate NERV, not yet. But one day you will no doubt outlive the applications we have for you."

"Is that a threat?" Gendo asked, deadpan.

Keel nearly smiled. "No, Ikari. Not a threat. A promise."


	2. Chapter 2

****

Piano Solo  
Chapter 2

_There._ It was the darkness of that night, she thought, that brought it on so strongly—the sensation that she was back there, that her city was still in danger, that she and all her friends might be sitting placidly at home when the alarms rang out and suddenly all of them could die in an instant.

Horaki Hikari had not known what to make of it at first. She did not know what strange creatures were ravaging her place of life, like demons freed from hell. Even now she questioned what she knew, asked herself if there was any chance that the official reports contained the slightest grain of truth. Perhaps—but unlikely.

Then there had been _that_ time. She remembered the day, clearly, and at one time and another it would spring to horrible life in front of her eyes as though time had been rewound and she was living it all again.

__

"What did they ask you to do?" she had said.

"Just some stuff…I'm not allowed to say…classified information and all that." His smile had been strained. "I'll be fine." But she knew it was a lie.

Then that night. There had been another Angel attack, again the city was razed to the ground and raised up again to the sky. This Angel had looked different, mirroring the creatures—the robots—which fought it.

_But then she had not known. It was only when he did not come to school the next day, or the next, or the next, and she realized he wasn't simply cutting classes. No one ever had to tell her, because she knew. But _they_ wouldn't let her in, wouldn't let her see him. One of them denied he was even there._

And now the blackness seemed to close in on her, suffocate her, until she wanted to retreat from the veranda of her house into the building itself, but that darkness blocked her from behind as well.

And suddenly, mysteriously, it vanished. The feeling disappeared and the darkness receded, content with its given providence.

"Hikari!" her mother called from inside. "School tomorrow! Get to bed!"

"Alright, mom!" she said, and turned around and left the darkness behind.

****

Ikari Gendo sat at his desk and rubbed his temples, exhausted. The night was late and the day had been hard. Fuyutsuki stood dutifully behind him, and for a moment Gendo wondered if he was nothing more than a particularly large, unruly marionette waiting for Gendo to pull his strings and make him dance. He found the notion suprisingly amusing.

Finally he leaned back in his chair. Without warning he hissed to the air, "_What?_ What could it be!"

Fuyutsuki looked down but didn't need to ask the question.

"SEELE hasn't destroyed us yet," Gendo said, sounding as frustrated as the sub-commander had ever heard him. "But that means there must be a reason for our continued existence. NERV—and its upstart commander, in particular—poses too much of a threat to SEELE even now for them not to eliminate us if they had the choice."

"Yes sir," Fuyutsuki said. "Perhaps one of our more experienced hackers could—"

"No. SEELE makes a practice boardering on paranoia of not storing anything of the slightest value on accessible computers. There are rumors that they have one single mainframe, a gargantuan supercomputer, secreted away in their most secure location, but it has no contact at all with outside systems—no network, local or otherwise; no access points except from the keyboard right in front of it; and _no_ unauthorized users. And in my very honest opinion, SEELE would store anything as sensitive as what they're planning to do with NERV only in the twisted recesses of their own minds."

"Yes," Fuyutsuki replied, "but do you suppose we could send our most covert agents to find the computer and query it…or even destroy it?"

Gendo scoffed. "It'd be easier to walk into Hell and gain an audience with Satan himself than it would be to get into that computer's stronghold—_if_ it even exists. I have only heard rumors, after all."

Fuyutsuki nodded and was silent. Gendo seemed to be thinking. Then:

"You're dismissed, Kozo. Go home now. I've got a bit of paperwork to finish." He sounded, suddenly, very tired, exhausted to the bone. Even Fuyutsuki worried distantly for his stoic Commander. But he nodded and walked for the door nonetheless, and it slid open before him. He paused.

"Good night, Commander," he said, not really looking back. 

Gendo's voice came from behind him. "Good night, Kozo."

The sub-commander walked out and the door shushed shut behind him. Gendo stared at the closed portal, contemplating the man who had left. Reticent but wise when he spoke, the only person on the staff willing and able to speak his full mind to Gendo when the mood took him. Yet Gendo ultimately held sway even over him. Fuyutsuki would himself make a fine commander, but he had either never been offered a position or never taken it.

Gendo's mind wandered, and he thought about what he would do about sleep that night. Often he simply spread out a futon on the floor of his office, although Fuyutsuki, first to arrive in the morning, was the only one who knew. He remembered when he used to sleep at home, or at least in a house; back before Shinji, and then after Shinji but before Yui had died. And after Yui had died there was no reason for the house anymore, for work became his life, and he left even his little son to the world's whims.

_Do I regret that now?_ Gendo asked himself, staring into the dark corners of the room as though they might have the answers. _Perhaps. But…not in the way a father would._

He took out the futon he stored habitually nearby and laid it on the ground. When he lay on it, the darkness seemed to close in on him, and whether it was condensing the room to protect him, or advancing and surrounding to destroy him, he was not sure.

Of course, he had lied about the paperwork.

****

In the night, Shinji dreamt. He feared the night, feared sleep, for he knew that with sleep came the dreams: re-enactions of his battles, flashing before his eyes. But they did not always turn out as they should have. He did not always win.

But Shinji never died. He was never that lucky, even in his dreams. Always the victims were his friends, his family. Again and again he saw Asuka's mind snap, Ayanami's Unit 00 explode. Once he thought he saw her head pass by his cockpit as the mech vaporized, its eyes glassy, the life gone from them.

Every time he would awaken, coated in cold sweat, hating himself for what he had done, or not done, according to the dream. After minute upon minute of staring into the solid darkness he might at last ascertain that he was at home, that his friends were still, for the most part, alive; that the battles were over.

But sometimes even then he could not convince himself. Sometimes, even then, he would fall back asleep not really knowing if he had woken up at all.

****

Amamiya Noriko woke to the sounds of chirping birds and gentle sunlight cascading through her bedroom window.

With a sudden thought she jerked up in bed, her stomach lurching. Today was the day. Today she and her family would be returning to Toyko-3.

She thought back, her mind stretching past what seemed like an eternity of being away. She remembered the first 'Angel attack' on Tokyo-3: buildings collapsing around her, people panicking despite the loudspeaker's injunctions to the contrary. She remembered scrambling to find shelter, praying that the shelters would even hold up against the otherwise unstoppable force.

She remembered, more acutely, that she had not been able to find shelter. When she finally did, it was too late; the door had been locked and despite her cries those inside were too frightened to open it. She had run desperately, trying to find something that might not collapse on top of her, finally scrambling to the top of a hill where there was nothing that would.

From afar she had watched the battle: first, a giant black beast striding through the streets of Tokyo-3, like the oversized creatures she saw so often in monster movies. U.N. assault planes and vehicles had attempted to intercept it, but their bullets, even their missiles, had dropped off of it without the slightest mark.

She remembered the horrible, all-encompassing fear, freezing her body in place amongst the grass, hoping and praying as she never had before that the battle would not come toward her, and that the rest of her family—separated from her in the rush to find shelter—were safe.

Then there had been the robot: as large as the _thing_ it fought, and looking even more awful. Its eyes, its face—locked in a permanent expression of malice, seeming to glow with the love of battle as it fought. It struck over and over, and was struck over and over, until finally it was toppled against a building and blood sprayed from its head.

_Why did the robot bleed?_ she would ask herself again and again. _Why blood?_ But the horrible red spurts had been imprinted on her mind forever, and often when she closed her eyes—especially at night—she would see them.

And then, miraculously, their fighter started up again. Climbed to its feet despite damage that should rightfully have destroyed it, survived even the final, ultradestructive self-sacrifice of the monster.

That blast had carried her off her feet, thrown her for meters. It had blotted out her hearing for several days, although—thank God—when it returned it was no worse than it had been to begin with.

Immediately after that battle, as soon as the doctors deemed Noriko 'fit and ready', her mother brought them all out from Tokyo-3: Noriko, her father, her younger brother.

Her father had objected, but in an uncharacteristic display of will her mother had told him she'd be damned if her children were going to grow up in an environment where the next minute could bring death, where years of their lives might be spent in fear. And her will had been so great and so lucid that their father had capitulated.

So they had moved far away from Tokyo-3, until her mother was confident that they would not be attacked again. Really she had wanted to take them somewhere even father than that—outside of Japan, to the United States or Europe; but their father had flatly refused to leave the country.

But now the reports were that the attacks had ceased. No more Angels were expected, no more horrible beasts or nightmarish monsters. And so Noriko's mother had agreed to move back to Tokyo-3. And so preparations had been made, and so Noriko had packed and readied and now—now she was going back.

Her stomach flipped over again as she pushed back her futon covers and rose to meet the day.

****

Something had happened in the hospital wing's administration. Misato did not know what the catalyst had been, but Asuka had suddenly been deemed fit for release from their care.

Misato was surprised but not at all displeased; she looked forward to welcoming Asuka back to her apartment, her 'family' complete once again. She wondered whether Asuka's temper would have mellowed from so long in a hospital bed, or only become inflamed for the same reason.

Either way, she expected Asuka would be glad to have a change of scenery and a bit more freedom. In fact, the release orders were strangely lacking any real guidelines for what to do with the girl once she was out—no requests from the doctors to check on her again, no injunctions to stay inside or to go out and get some fresh air.

Asuka herself was not sure what to make of the order. For better or for worse, she had become accustomed to the routine of the hospital and her near inability to leave her bed, much less her room, except for particular check-ups and the like.

All she really understood was that she had been reclining in her bed a few days ago when a doctor—a marked change from the silent, almost indifferent nurse who usually made the rounds—came into her room and told her that she was to be released within the week. He had not said precisely when, only that it would happen. She imagined they were taking the intervening time to check and double-check, and possibly triple- or quadruple-check everything to make sure no one in any other departments would be upset with their releasing her.

But it didn't matter to her one way or the other. The stale hospital air, sometimes tinged with an unpleasant scent wafting from other wards, had become normal for her. It no longer bothered her to have a nurse meandering in and out of her room at preset times. In fact, part of her wondered if she would not be perturbed by their abscence.

Instead of examining the question in what she was certain was a hopeless pursuit, she lay back and closed her eyes. Soon the chatter in her mind subsided, and she drifted off to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Piano Solo  
Chapter 3**

Rei woke and stared upward, motionless.  The light of the early morning slipped through the blinds over her apartment windows and illuminated the ceiling above her.  Intermittent bars of shade indicated where the frame of the window interrupted the sun's rays.

Rei took an uncharacteristically deep breath, taking in the scents of the room.  There were not many:  it smelled faintly musty because the entire apartment complex was run-down; the smell of uprooted buildings and asphalt occasionally wafted in from the construction not far away; and she could make out a faint scent that she thought must be her own—but that was all.

Sounds were similarly scarce.  Somewhere amidst the concrete and technology that dominated outside her window she could hear birds chirping, and on the streets below there were already cars, people on their way to work.  But inside was silent, and for a brief moment her mind was silent as well.

She slid over slightly and got up, her mind focusing quickly, seemingly not the least bit caught in the sleep it had so recently left.

Rei washed and showered quickly, wanting to arrive at school early—as she always did.  Without any need for NERV to test or screen her she had been in attendence on a more regular basis than at any time during her tenure as an Eva pilot.  It did not bother her, but she still had become no more social—in fact, if anything, she had become less so, drawn ever more into her own mind.

She saw her face in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, and some emotion ran through her.  She did not know what to call it—it was not shock, nor surprise, nor even fear or loathing.  It had been brought on by the sight of her eyes, which reflected no emotion, and her face, not smiling or frowning or betraying any sensation—unreadable even to her.

The feeling, she decided must have been _existence_ coursing through her.  She did not know if this was good, or bad, or—as her face suggested—indifferent.

But she also realized something which caused a tremor of what she thought might be fear to ripple through her:  she was unique.  The first Rei, and the second, had known that if they died another would take their place.  This had not made them reckless, Rei reflected, but accepting of death.  They did not particularly expect to live, and so they had no particular expectations of their life—only servitude, doing as NERV—as _Gendo_—told them.

But for her, Rei III, there was no other.  Akagi Ritsuko had destroyed the dummy project and with it all of Rei's broodmates, all of those who would gladly have taken for themselves the soul inside her now, if they had had the chance.  (But _would_ they have taken it gladly? she asked herself.  They had no capacity to feel emotion without the soul, did they?)  If she died, there would be no new Rei to take her place, to continue living this life.

_And so?_ she asked.  _What does that do to me?  Does it make this life I live real, any more real than that which my predecssors moved through?  Did the first and second Reis not create this life?  Am I not merely carrying on the legacy which they began?_

She remembered the boy, Kaworu, and how unafraid he had been to die.  _But he was not a boy,_ she thought, _he was an Angel.  Nevertheless…did he not appear human?  Did he not act human?  And, in the end, is that not what I also do?  I only act—I am no human._

She sighed.  There was no sadness, no longing in the sound, it was only the result of air passing her lips.  Now was no time for such ruminations, she knew; there were classes.

Attend school…that is what normal little girls do.

****

Asuka limped her way out of the hospital, muttering and cursing at the crutches which were now required to support her atrophied legs.  She had been in physical therapy, yes, but there was never enough of that to go around and she was still working on learning to walk again.

Misato had come to meet Asuka and take her back to the apartment, and although Asuka was not happy with the idea of having to be so coddled, she accepted it nonetheless.

Misato lifted Asuka into the car, closing the door and blocking out Asuka's final obscenity.  When she climbed into the driver's side of the car the girl was staring sullenly out the window, saying nothing.  Under normal circumstances this would have bothered Misato on some level, but given the situation as it stood she was less inclined to be upset with Asuka.

Misato turned the key in the ignition and the car started with a rumble, the sound of a vehicle that had seen more than its fair share of use.  _Too bad for it,_ Misato thought.  _I haven't got the money for a new car._

The hospital and the apartment complex where Misato and the children made their home were not far apart—necessarily so, for swift access to NERV's headquarters had been essential during the Time of Trials—but it was still a noticable drive, and Misato wondered privately what she might do to break Asuka's icy silence.

"You know," Misato said tentatively, "Shinji's missed you.  And so has PenPen."  Asuka barely stirred at their names.  "And I have, too," Misato added quietly.  She thought she saw Asuka look at her out of the corner of her eye, although with her own eyes focused on the road she couldn't say for certain.

"All your things are just the way you left them," Misato said, hoping that the thought of her personal belongings might cheer Asuka some small bit.

Asuka continued to stare out the window, but suddenly her own voice in her mind stirred.  _Even the book,_ she assured herself.  _Even Misato doesn't know about the book._  A little picture book, one of the few things she had brought with her from Germany.  _Rotkäppchen_, the little girl who went to her grandma's house and met a wolf.  She remembered hearing the name 'Little Red Riding Hood', someplace.

Outwardly, despite all her thoughts, Asuka only nodded, but Misato took comfort in it, the first reaction she had gotten from the girl.  She determined to be satisfied with it and ceased talking, and the silence hung between them.  But it was not the awkward, pressing silence that had occupied the car before.  Something had been said, and something—however small or subtle—had been said back.

Asuka watched the road blur by, trees standing here and there along an otherwise bare stretch of highway.  She thought of the apartment where her room was still in order, where the penguin was probably reading the newspaper, and where a forlorn little boy missed her.  She was loathe to admit it, even to herself, but she had missed Shinji, too.

****

Shinji sat in class again, watching the teacher write something on the blackboard.  But as usual, his thoughts were not on what the teacher was writing, but instead on almost everything else.

Asuka was coming home from the hospital today, assuming the doctors didn't suddenly revoke the release order.  Shinji and Misato had considered trying to plan some kind of celebration to meet Asuka's arrival, but with the consideration, to say nothing of the planning, having begun at ten o'clock the previous night, there was little that could be done.

Rei was sitting in her seat, staring silently ahead.  Shinji wondered if she had heard yet about Asuka's release.  He understood that the two girls had never seemed to get along very well together, but wondered if Rei felt anything at all about the other child who was so different from her.

Not for the first time, Shinji wished desperately for a way to communicate with Ayanami.  But he no longer knew why.  He knew now what Rei was, had seen Ritsuko destroy the dummy system with her own hands.  He knew that this Rei was not the Rei he had met when he arrived, and might never be.  Did the soul, he had asked himself time and again, carry the personality with it?  Both Reis had been very quiet.  But Shinji knew no more than this and so could not judge whether they were different people.

Shinji wondered, sometimes, if he should be repulsed by Ayanami now that he knew the truth about her.  Distantly, he felt as though he should—as though he should not be so attracted to a doll, a dummy.  But with the other dolls destroyed, and this the only one left, was she not now human?  Shinji didn't know.

There were rumors that a new transfer student would be arriving soon.  It did not completely surprise Shinji; since the reports had been released that the Angels had been defeated there had been a relatively steady influx of new students who were actually old students, who had fled the city or ceased attending school during the Angel attacks.

Faintly Shinji wondered who the new arrival, if a new arrival there was, would be—if he or she might finally be someone Shinji could understand and talk to.  But, no.  None of the others had been.  Kaworu had been the only one.  _Is everything I love destined to destroy me?_ Shinji asked himself miserably.  His mother had been the one who created the beast which controlled him.  His father, whom he might perhaps have loved in some distant past, had conscripted him into this terrible battle.  And Kaworu, who had loved him, was fated to kill him, or to die.

Shinji sighed and looked out the window, but there was nothing there—only the invisible eddies of the breeze, free from care and worry.

****

There was a screech of rubber on concrete and a jolt as the plane touched down in Tokyo-3.  Noriko watched the runway surroundings speed past as the plane heaved mightily to come to a stop.

The flight to Tokyo had been an uneventful one, something she was consciously thankful for.  She had decided that the fewer events she had in her life, the better.

At length the plane came to a halt.  The 'fasten seat belts' light flicked off and people began to stand and stretch, hefting bags onto shoulders and dragging luggage down from overhead compartments.

Noriko stood up, faintly disconcerted by the realization that she was back where she had started.  For an instant she felt nauseous, but it subsided as quickly as it had come.  She looked out the window, some part of her expecting to see a giant beast rampaging through the city.  She smiled hesitantly and chided herself silently, trying to teach herself no longer to fear such attacks.

"Come on, Noriko, time to get off."  Her mother's voice cut through her thoughts and Noriko turned slightly to see her mother waiting with a faintly impatient look on her face.  The plane was mostly empty by now; Noriko had no idea how long she had been standing there.  Jun'ichiro and her father had already disembarked.

She nodded and followed her mother off the plane.  The only possessions she carried with her were in a green pouch slung over her shoulder; it was an odd constrast to the sleeveless pink shirt she had chosen and clashed almost as badly with her purple hair and the yellow hair band holding the hair back.  Her father had her suitcases and had wheeled everything slowly off the plane and into the airport concourse.

The airport proper was flooded with people.  _Most of them are probably just going about their daily lives_, Noriko thought, but she herself felt almost like she was returning from exile.  However, whether the Tokyo she left would be the same Tokyo she returned to was a question that still bothered her.  The masses of people in the airport seemed to indicate a city that was still teeming with life for all its trials, though one airport was not much to judge by.

Noriko's father led her and her mother and brother outside the airport and hailed a cab.  Between them they loaded their luggage into the car's trunk and then climbed into the back seat of the vehicle itself, Noriko on the far side looking out the window.  Her father gave the address of their new apartment to the driver, who nodded and worked his way onto the road.

The airport was somewhat removed from the city itself, and despite having seen the vista before, Noriko was still awed by the skyline as they approached.  Tokyo-3 was riddled with skyscrapers, towers that stretched up to the clouds and, it seemed, beyond.  The city was also peppered with smaller buildings, so that the overall effect of the picture was one of an undulating wave, tracing its way across the horizon.

The sun had already begun to set by now, and its illumination set the city on fire with oranges and reds, throwing light from behind the buildings so they were cast into shadow, heightening the appearance of an unbroken line of constructs.

As the cab neared the city the buildings grew larger and larger, until they were within the city limits and Noriko had to strain her neck to look up at the tops, and then the tips of the skyscrapers disappeared entirely from the vantage point of the car's window.

The city still bustled, was still inhabited by millions of people.  When Noriko looked out the window at street level she saw people going about their lives—returning from jobs, putting out trash, emerging from subway stations—but she understood that she could not know how many of them, like her, carried secret sadness; how many grieved for those lost to the mysterious beasts or whose lives had been touched by the neverending fear imparted by those creatures.

And she wondered how many of them, like her, were returned expatriots of Tokyo-3, now strangers in a strange land.

****

Shinji arrived at the apartment and shut the door quietly.  "I'm home," he announced to Pen-Pen, his bookbag making an audible _whumph_ as it hit the ground.

"I'm glad to see you didn't let Misato _completely_ destroy the apartment while I was gone," a familiar voice said.  "Maybe you do have a bit of spine after all."

Asuka emerged into the main room of the apartment, trying her hardest to look tall and proud while limping along on crutches.  Shinji smiled hesitantly.  "You're home," he said, as though he had not truly believed she would be.  Asuka stumbled on her supports and Shinji moved forward to help her, but she shooed him away with the few fingers she could free up from holding on to the crutch.

"How—How are you?" Shinji asked, searching for something to say.

"Never been better," Asuka said defiantly.  It was clear even to Shinji that she had, in fact, been better; though he could hardly fault her for her frustration with her present state.

"You…you need help with anything?"

"No!" Asuka said fiercely, almost leaping forward with annoyance.

"Oh…okay," Shinji said, cowed.  "Well, ah…if you need anything…tell me, okay?"

Asuka only sniffed, though Shinji chose to take it as an implicit agreement.  He picked up his bookbag to take it to his room, but looked again at Asuka.

"It's…good to have you home," he said earnestly.

"Yeah, yeah," Asuka said, then slowly but surely limped her way, crutches and all, back to her room.

****

Misato sped toward the apartment complex, her car occasionally groaning under the strain.  After transplating Asuka in the apartment and ensuring that she could get at food and water when she needed them, Misato had returned to work.  It wasn't as though there was anything especially urgent to be done, but she hadn't the slightest idea what she would have done if she had instead stayed behind with the girl and her silence.

_It's better to do it this way,_ Mistao told herself, _let her re-acclimate herself to the apartment at her own pace._

Nonetheless, Misato had taken off early from work—all told, she had only been there about three hours, though no one noticed or cared—and had planned to pick up Shinji from school, just as a change of pace.  When she got there, she found that he had already left, and so headed home on her own.

The trip to the apartment complex seemed quicker than usual today, possibly because Misato had been so absorbed in her own thoughts.  But regardless of the reason, she headed into the parking garage and found a prime spot near an elevator.

Unfortunately, the garage and the apartments were not connected, so in the end Misato took the elevator to the ground floor of the garage, walked the fifty feet to the apartment complex, and took another elevator back up to the floor on which her room resided.

The halls of the complex were somewhat dim, but it didn't bother her; she had grown quite used to it.  And with the option to bring as many lamps as one desired into the apartments themselves, there was really no need to worry about the state of the hallyway lighting.

Nonetheless, she was surprised to meet a party of four people coming up through the halls, made somewhat more indistinct by the darkness of the corridors themselves.  A man and a woman, each perhaps in their mid- to late-thirties, stood on either side of a young girl whose strangely-colored selection of clothing seemed somehow to meld into a cohesive whole.  The woman was holding the hand of a young child, a boy.

"Er, excuse me," the man said, "but we're a bit lost, do you know your way around here?"

"Pretty much," Misato said, smiling slightly.

"Well, we're new here," the man said, scratching the back of his head.  "We're supposed to be in room 415, but we can't seem to find it…"

"415, huh?" Misato said, thinking briefly.  "That's probably one floor up from here."

"Oh, I see," the man said, smiling sheepishly.  "Alright.  Thank you."

He almost turned to go but stopped.  "It seems we'll be neighbors, in a sense," he said, now smiling a bit more fully.  "I'm Amamiya Toshio," he said, bowing.  "This is my wife, Shizue"—she bowed—"and our daughter Noriko and son Jun'ichiro."

"Pleased to meet you," Noriko said politely, also bowing.  "Hi!" Jun'ichiro chirped.  His mother looked reprovingly down at him but said nothing.

Misato smiled and returned the bow.  "Katsuragi Misato."

"Oh, I've heard of you!" Toshio's wife, reticent until now, burst out.  "You were one of those people who fought those awful creatures, weren't you!  Tell me, are they really all gone?"

"That's what we're all being told," Misato said, her face darkeningly perceptibly.  "I guess it's true—there were supposed to be seventeen—but they haven't disbanded my…organization, yet."

"Oh my," Shizue said, clearly at a loss for how to continue.

"You know, Shinji's your age, Noriko," Misato said, trying to mend the rift that had suddenly opened between them all.  "I bet you two could be friends."

"Oh, you have a son?" Toshio asked, glad for the relief from his wife's awkward question.

"Oh, no," Misato said, "He just lives with me is all—"  She stopped herself and said quickly, "Er, that came out totally wrong, I mean, he's kind of an adoptee, just not officially and all—"

"I see, I see," Toshio said, laughing.  He did not seem at all discomfited by the slip, though Misato was not wholly convinced that he didn't now see her as some kind of deviant.

"Anyway, I should be going," Misato said, ready to escape this company for the time being.  "Good luck finding your apartment, welcome to…here…" she finished lamely.

The Amamiyas smiled, bowed again, and piled into the elevator to ascend to the proper floor.  Misato made for her apartment, uncomfortably disconcerted by the entire conversation.

****

Yamagata Satoshi was dressed all in black, covered from head to toe—a face mask, shirt, gloves, pants, boots.  He had no idea what sort of good it would do him where he was going, but wanted to take every possible precaution.

A large but innocuous building came into sight.  It bore a similarly large sign reading _Momo-taro Realty_, with an imposing representation of the Peach Boy on it.  Satoshi crept through shadows and alleyways to reach his destination.  He fished into a small satchel of equipment and withdrew a long piece of almost invisibly thin wire.

Several yards from the building, he stopped and stared into the night.  There was a dark form moving past the entrance, looking this way and that.  Satoshi could make out no security cameras on the side of the building.

So noting, he sneaked to another vantage point only a dozen feet away from the realty office.  Still no overt sign of security other than the lone guard.

When the man passed by again, Satoshi made his move.  Covering the distance in mere seconds, he grabbed the guard from behind and slammed a hand into the small of his back, hearing the guard's breath come flying out of him.  In his opponent's moment of incapacitation, Satoshi slipped the wire over his throat and made one deep, swift jerk.

A horrible death rattled escaped the guard's mouth, but it did not faze his attacker, who thrust the body onto the ground, striving to remain out of sight.  The streets were deserted but to make oneself inordinately visible was simply bad policy.

He stripped the guard of his uniform and put it on himself, then turned out pockets until he located a set of keys.  Finally he shoved the body into a clump of bushes, expecting that it would not be discovered until well after he was gone—one way or another.

Thus attired, Satoshi unlocked the door of the realty building.  Whether the stolen uniform would do him any good was dubious, inasmuch as he still wore the black face mask, gloves, and boots quite openly, but any way to improve his chances was a way he would take.

He crept into the darkened building, strange shadows cast on the walls by the streetlamps outside.  But he had long ago learned not to be afraid of the dark—the dark, in fact, was his friend, perhaps the only friend he had in his line of work.

Satoshi walked slowly along the walls, pressing them and probing them, searching for something.  He found only a door to the basement, which he also unlocked, and descended into the even darker bottom floor.

Down here it was not only impossible to see but reeked, and somewhere in the distance water dripped unceasingly onto the cold stone floor.  Satoshi walked carefully, tapping here and there with his foot.  Suddenly he heard something hollow.  On the wall beyond, he could just barely make out a key pad, almost completely invisible for the darkness.

But he had no time to be hacking terminals and instead pulled a thin plastic explosive from his pack, setting it on the floor where it had sounded empty.  Retreating, he triggered the bomb.

The sound was deafening, and lit the entire room for a brief instant:  cracked grey walls which bespoke an old and dilapidated building, which might have fallen down long ago were it not for its new proprietors.  But more importantly, Satoshi saw that he had been right; the hollow spot had been a doorway, and he came back to it quickly and dropped in.

Down here everything was polished and new, metallic.  It was still dim; most of the lights had been turned off for the night, but a safety lamp here and there illuminated his path.  He reached once again into the bag and withdrew a pistol, sleek and black.  There was no more reason to be discreet.

Satoshi began to rush now, knowing that the sound of the blast would have attracted any security guards in this part of the building.  As he ran he extracted a tiny radio from his satchel, a one-way communicator.

The sub-commander's orders had been very clear:  get in, see if the computer in fact existed, and, if possible, escape.  If escape was impossible—as Satoshi had been sure it would be—he was to deny any connection to NERV no matter what.

It seemed that although Kaji Ryoji had been working for the Ministry of the Interior, it was still altogether possible for NERV's finer 'technicians' to get at the data he had collected, ruling out 108 possible locations for the computer.  But Fuyutsuki claimed to have heard of one more, the nearly derelict business Momotaro Realty, where SEELE might have hidden such a thing.  He even thought he knew where the terminal was concealed.

_Of course there's no way,_ Satoshi had told himself almost as soon as he saw the building.  It was far too lightly guarded in every respect.  But he was here to complete a mission; that was his given purpose in life.  And death.

Satoshi moved quickly, but not quickly enough; he heard the steady footsteps of two guards coming up on him.  He located the room where the computer was supposed to be and burst inside.

A dark chamber greeted him, lined with weapons and ammunition, but there was no computer terminal to be found.

"Stop where you are!" A man's voice called.

He turned and saw two pistols pointed directly at him.  Satoshi held the tiny radio up to his mouth and hissed, "Nothing!" before crushing it violently in his hand.  One of the guards fired, the shot ringing in the enclosed space.  Satoshi clutched his shoulder and keeled, clutching at his pistol and trying to bring it to bear on his assailants.

Though he managed to wrench himself upright a second time, there was no real hope.  He fired off one haphazard shot and saw a red flower bloom in the shoulder of one of the guards.  _An eye for an eye, a shoulder for a shoulder,_ he thought grimly, but the other guard had fired again, catching him in the arm and causing him to drop his weapon.

When he looked up again, the guards were already bearing down on him…

****

Noriko exhaled and settled onto the floor, her futon already spread out on the ground in her room.  Most of the family's luggage still sat unopened and unsorted in the main room; they had after all arrived late in the day, found their apartment even later, and had no stamina left to unpack.

Noriko would be starting at her new school—actually her old school—beginning the very next day; her mother had had the stated intention of making sure Noriko missed as little class as possible.

Her father had already found a job in Tokyo-3, as a programming specialist for a small but growing firm that made its home not far from the family's apartment.  Her mother planned to stay home and manage the apartment; at least, Noriko thought, until boredom seized her strongly enough to gall her into finding something else to do.

With such thoughts whirling nonstop in her head, Noriko doubted if she would ever get to sleep.  But she had underestimated her own fatigue, and she drifted away almost as soon as her eyes were closed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Piano Solo  
Chapter 4**

"It seems we have a new transfer student today," the teacher said, progressing laboriously through the words. "Or should I say, an old transfer student…she is returning to Tokyo-3 after some time away."

This wasn't a totally unexpected occurrence; the new student's arrival was not the first time a child who had left Tokyo-3 during the Angel attacks had returned to class.

The teacher motioned toward the door. "Please, come in."

A girl entered, her purple hair contrasting sharply with the subdued blue-and-white school uniform she was wearing. She seemed faintly ambivalent about this place, and understandably; but all who came in this condition hoped somewhere that their fears would be assuaged, unfounded.

"Amamiya Noriko," the teacher announced, and Noriko silently, hesitantly, wrote her name on the board.

Noriko did not recognize any of the faces before her, as if in her absence the entire class had changed. And, in a way, it had. It wasn't just that she didn't know anyone. The atmosphere was different. The air seemed…stagnant. As if all the tension that had accrued during the Angel attacks was still there, unused, now without a home.

"There's a seat open…" the teacher stopped and stared around, though there were so many seats open that Noriko could practically have had her pick. "…there next to Ayanami," the teacher finished at length.

Noriko walked uncertainly toward the desks; the teacher had not pointed out her seat and she was of course unfamiliar with the child named. A scruffy-haired boy caught her eye and nodded toward Rei; Noriko smiled at him in thanks and took her place.

'Ayanami' struck Noriko strangely. She stared straight ahead even as Noriko sat down, not moved in the least by her new neighbor. She did not seem to fidget or even, often, blink, and did not seem inclined to talk. Nonetheless Noriko leaned over and whispered, "Hey." But she received no response.

Noriko was not so much put out as mystified by Rei's lack of acknowledgment. The entire class seemed quiet and downbeat, but Rei was epitome of it all. Part of Noriko secretly wondered if, were Ayanami to be removed from the room, the rest of the class would suddenly animate itself.

"Now," the teacher was saying, "I believe we were on page 215 of our mathematics texts…" As one, the class removed their math books and opened to the page the teacher named, though how many of them were really following along was debatable.

Noriko pushed aside the thought of the mysterious girl next to her, and tried to concentrate on her studies.

Asuka hobbled out of the apartment, still supported almost entirely by her crutches. Misato had gone to work, which was probably just as well, since if she had known Asuka was leaving the apartment unaccompanied and only artificially mobile she probably would have objected.

The day was a beautiful one; a calm, cool breeze blew at intervals and the very fresh air seemed to have a distinct scent to it. The trees wavered slightly under it, but pleasantly, and everywhere people were regretful that they could not be outside to enjoy it.

Asuka did not intend to go far, but even though she was annoyed with the crutches she knew she would have to do quite a bit of work to totally get rid of them. She resolved to walk to the park about a block away from the apartment, rest on one of the benches there, and then start back.

She walked laboriously slowly, and it angered her. She struggled valiantly to keep the frustration in check, but it was not enough to keep her from occasionally cursing roundly at her faux legs.

At length, she reached the park. It was green all around, bordered by trees, the grass kept rich by a strict watering regimen and a devoted groundskeeper. In the dead center of the park was a fountain—nothing elaborate, but it looked good all the same and broke up the verdance of the rest of the area.

Asuka took a seat on a bench a few meters from the fountain and exhaled heavily; it was only then that she realized how hard she was breathing. She watched the fountain, and saw a little boy dance his way in front of it, chasing after a butterfly. His mother followed after, warning him repeatedly not to fall in the water.

A cool breeze swept through and in front of Asuka the grass rustled, behind her was the sibilance of the tree leaves. An old woman hobbled over and sat down on the bench not far from Asuka. She leaned on a cane, and when she sat she braced the cane against the ground and lay her hands on top of it.

"It's good to see a young lady out for a walk," she said, unprovoked.

"If you can call it that," Asuka muttered. She had lain her crutches across her legs, and suddenly became uncomfortably aware of their weight pressing down on her.

"Now, dearie, any little breath of fresh air is good for you," the woman said, smiling. "I try to get out every day and come here, even though it's only a few blocks."

"I didn't even get that far," Asuka said, more to the air than the woman.

The elderly lady laughed, a loud, full laugh. "You shouldn't worry so much, if your crutches are anything to judge by. Little steps turn into long distances over time, dearie."

Asuka nodded, without a word.

The wind stirred, and Asuka's long red hair danced on her shoulders.

The bell sounded its tones and the teacher wheezed, "Class dismissed." There was suddenly the babble of children as they filed excitedly out of the room. As they left, Noriko hurried to catch up with Ayanami, who was among the first to leave.

"Hey!" she said, running up beside Rei. "Hello!"

Rei turned her head and fixed Noriko with her large, unblinking gaze. "Hello." Her voice seemed dry, almost lifeless. Noriko looked back into Rei's eyes: on any other person the stare would have looked vacuous, but with Rei Noriko had the distinct sensation she was being judged, evaluated. "Can I help you?"

Noriko was thrown off by the question. _What an unnatural thing to say,_ Noriko thought. "Well, uhm…" she scrambled for the words. "Looks like we're seatmates now, huh?"

"Yes," Rei replied.

Noriko foundered for a moment, given no way to continue the conversation. She decided to go for a sure ice-breaker.

"What's your favorite TV show?"

"I do not watch TV." Rei did not seemed upset or disdainful, merely factual, and it bothered Noriko all the more.

"Why…why not?"

"My apartment doesn't have one."

"Oh," Noriko said, almost as though disappointed. "Are you poor or something?" Suddenly she stopped, mortified. "I mean! Oh, I…I don't…I didn't…I didn't mean it like that!"

"I see no need for such excesses," Rei said, ignoring Noriko's hurried apologies.

"I…I see," Noriko said. "Then…what do you do in your free time?"

The question seemed to confuse Rei, or at least give her pause. At length she replied uncertainly, "It… It does not matter."

There was an uncomfortable silence between the two. Finally, Rei stopped. "This is my building," she said, and went in, leaving Noriko on the street. Noriko looked around at the dingy urban surroundings, and for the first time noticed the near-constant clanging of construction machines in the background. She wondered how Rei ever concentrated with that kind of noise going non-stop.

She also realized she did not know the way home.

Shinji left school alone.

He had noticed Ayanami leaving, and had seen the new girl running to catch up with her. He had not seen if she succeeded. He wondered if they knew each other from before the new girl left, or if there was some reason the transfer might want to the speak to the silent girl.

Shinji himself had been all but unable to speak to Ayanami after Ritsuko had revealed to him what Rei truly was. Now Shinji was at an impasse. Clearly, the Ayanami who walked the school grounds today did not remember who Shiniji was, except in the most factual way.

But Shinji had seen Dr. Akagi destroy the dummy project with his own eyes. This was the only Rei left—if Shinji attempted to rebuild his relationship with the other Ayanami with this new one, then he could know that for better or for worse, he would never have to do so again.

And yet he could not bring himself to speak to her; it took all of his strength merely to look at her. If the second Ayanami had been distant, this one was completely removed, where the previous Rei had seemed emotionless, this one seemed almost cold.

Shinji turned street corners and walked what seemed like a long way. He wanted to go to the NERV hospital wing to see Toji. He had not heard anything about Toji for quite some time, and staff members were evasive about answering his questions.

The giant shining pyramid of NERV headquarters rose before Shinji. He shivered, its image reminding him afresh of the horrible deeds he had perpetrated there. Nonetheless he summoned his resolve and walked inside, going to the hospital he knew so well.

As he walked down the corridor to his friend's room, he was met by a doctor accompanying a young man the other way. Shinji stopped and gaped: the young man was Toji.

"T…Toji!" Shinji stammered.

"Hey, Shinji!" Toji said jovially. "I wondered if I'd ever see your mug around here again!"

Toji seemed to be in amazingly good health for the injuries he had sustained at the controls of EVA-05.

"How did they heal you like that?" Shinji asked, his mouth still hanging slightly open.

"Well," Toji said as if embarrassed, "a lot of stitches. But most of the really serious stuff was on the inside. I had, like, three different transplants." Shinji started, the doctor next to Toji said nothing.

"But they never told me you were being released," Shinji went on. "Why are they letting you out?"

"Oh, the medical staff decided I was doing well enough to be treated on an outpatient basis if necessary." The words suggested he had learned them by rote, and he shook his head at Shinji as if to say 'There's more to the story'.

The doctor led Toji, now accompanied by Shinji, to the front door of NERV headquarters, where he signed a bevy of forms at the desk at then pointed to the door. "Can you get home?" he asked.

"I'll go with him," Shinji offered, and the doctor merely nodded and walked back the way they had come. Shinji and Toji went the other way, back out into the bright sunlight.

"That was weird," Shinji said once they were outside. "I've never seen a doctor just leave a patient like that."

Toji nodded. "Lemme tell you the truth," he said. "But it's off the record, okay? I don't know just why they're doing this, but they're not letting me out because I'm fine and dandy. I mean—I am, really, I'm fine," he backpedaled, seeing Shinji's fearful expression. "Nothing real bad should happen from here on out. But I think the real reason they're letting me go is because they can't afford it anymore. I'm costing them too much."

Shinji nodded, then summoned his voice. "But…then…what about your sister? Can't they take care of her, either?"

Toji suddenly became very grave. "Yeah," he murmured, "funny thing about her…she, ah…she's dead."

Shinji stopped in his tracks. "What?"

"Yeah…it was a couple of weeks ago. They thought they'd fixed her all up, and they let her out a long time ago. But it turns out something gave her some kind of weird concussion. They never really explained it to me, but…I guess something happened in her head that they never noticed and didn't fix. And it came back and got her."

For a moment Shinji could barely catch his breath. "I…I…I'm so sorry, Toji…" And mentally Shinji added another life to the list of those he'd taken, those who had died for his crusade.

"Shinji, y' couldn't've done anything about it," Toji said, not looking at him. "I know I got mad at you back when you came here, but…but it wasn't your fault. It really wasn't." He stopped as his voice cracked. He forced himself to continue. "But I can't help but wonder…if it wasn't, y'know…some… life-for-a-life kind of thing. And…And I wish to God it would've been me instead."

Shinji put his hand uncertainly on his friend's shoulder. "I know what you mean," he said truthfully.

Shinji had seen Toji safely home—he really did seem all right—and Toji had invited his friend in for a desultory snack of tea and crackers. Toji's parents had not been home ("Even they don't know I'm being let out…oughta be a surprise for them," Toji had said) and after ten minutes or so of sitting in awkward silence Shinji had done his best to take his leave with grace.

Now it was midafternoon bordering on evening and Shinji was back at his own apartment complex, staring up at the massive building with the countless windows which stared out of it, like a hundred thousand eyes all watching the city, all watching _him_.

Anxious to escape their gaze, Shinji hurried inside, but there he stopped again and leaned against the wall as though too tired to go on. _Toji's sister is dead,_ he kept repeating, as though he couldn't accept and internalize the fact. It simply kept saying itself over and over and over, ringing like a mantra until the words lost all meaning and Shinji was simply staring numbly into the wall across from his.

His reverie was suddenly interrupted by the door opening. He looked up: the new girl had arrived.

"Oh, h…hi," he said, pulling his weight away from the wall and back onto his feet. "I…I didn't know you lived here."

Noriko smiled uncertainly. "Yeah, I…I didn't know you lived here, either."

They stared at each other for a moment as though taking each other in, then Noriko offered, "I'm Noriko…what's your name?"

"Ikari Shinji," Shinji replied, and bowed unsteadily. "Pleased to meet you."

"Pleased to meet you," Noriko echoed, and also bowed. "Say," she said, remembering, "I think I heard about you…"

_Here it comes,_ Shinji thought to himself, _she knows about Eva and the Angels and all the terrible things I've done…_

"My family met a woman when we were looking for our apartment the other day, she mentioned someone named Shinji…"

"Huh?" Shinji said, surprised. "You mean you've already met Misato?"

"Is that her name?" Noriko asked.

"Well…I guess I don't know if there are other Shinjis in here," Shinji replied, his social anxieties catching up with him again.

"I'll bet it was you," Noriko said, trying to lift his spirits. "She said you were about my age."

"Oh…" Shinji said only. There was another uncomfortable silence.

"So, what did you do after school?" Noriko asked, trying to jump-start the conversation.

"Oh, I was just…to see a friend," Shinji replied morosely, and Noriko could tell by his face that she'd said something wrong. She was saved from having to come up with something else when Shinji continued, "I saw you running after Ayanami when we left…did you catch up with her?"

"I…I did," Noriko said, remembering the distant girl she had spoken to that afternoon.

"What did you talk about?" Shinji asked. Coming from anyone else Noriko would have thought he was prying, but Shinji's voice was so guileless that she couldn't help but answer.

"Well, not much…she doesn't seem like a very talkative person, you know?"

"Yeah…I know," Shinji replied, and Noriko knew that he meant it.

"But…I'd like to get to know her," Noriko said, trying to sound spirited.

"Me too," Shinji said, with an almost imperceptible nod. "She's hard to get to know, though."

"It looks like it," Noriko agreed. "But I'll bet she's really nice when you get to know her."

"I guess," Shinji said. "I…I don't know her that well, either."

"That's too bad," Noriko said. "Maybe between us we can help her open up."

"Maybe," Shinji said.

The talking stopped for a moment.

"Uhm, look," Noriko said, stepping forward a little, "I've got to help make dinner tonight, so I should get going…see you tomorrow," she said, smiling as best she could.

Shinji tried valiantly to return the gesture. "Okay," he said. "See you tomorrow."

Noriko walked by him and took the first elevator that came. Shinji stood a moment longer and then, the apathy that had consumed him earlier lifted, he too ascended to his home.

"It seems one of our operatives has gone missing," Gendo said dryly.

Fuyutsuki, standing before him, across the vast desk, gazed at him. "Yes, sir."

"I told you not to go looking for that computer."

"I know, sir."

Gendo snorted derisively. "You're dismissed, Kozo."

"Yes, sir." Fuyutsuki left the room. He knew that if he were any other one of the Commander's subordinates, his head would have been mounted on a pike outside Gendo's office. Instead he had come out quite intact, and without even the dressing-down he had expected. Something told him that Gendo had secretly wanted to search for SEELE's fabled computer himself, but had never had an excuse to do so.

"Glad I could be of service, sir," he muttered to the air.

In a black room, black statues stood and held conference. The space was illuminated only by the glowing, blood-colored letters on the statues: SEELE.

"Ikari is testing us," the third statue said, "sending his spies to look for things he should not try to find."

"No," the second statue refuted, "Ikari would never do anything so rash—even he. It must have been without his knowledge."

"Without his _explicit_ knowledge," another obelisk corrected.

"All the same, it means _somebody_ is trying to investigate us." Keel's voice emanated from the statue marked 01. "Let us make certain that all of our security is quite tight."

"Agreed," several others said.

"And now, to business," Keel continued. "The mass-production units are on-schedule."

It was a statement. All of the others volunteered prefunctory confirmations.

"Then we will soon have all the machinery necessary to bring about the Promised Day," the first statue said. "But there is one thing which we still lack."

"The Lance."

"Precisely. The Lance is still in lunar orbit and shows no sign of breaking free at the moment."

"Well, what shall we do?" The fourth statue seemed amost plantive.

"Perhaps we can create some kind of space craft which can retrieve it," another volunteered.

"No, no," a third objected. "Such a thing could never be made. The Lance is huge, and I think that no space carrier vessel could successfully bring it back to Earth, _especially_ with the utter secrecy which we would require."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," Keel said, his deep, throaty voice cutting through the intensifying debate. "I think you are all grossly underestimating the Lance's capacity to act under its own volition."

"What do you mean?" the second statue asked, as if suspicious.

"What I mean," Keel said, "is that the Lance of Longinus is inextricably linked with the Evangelions. When eight separate Evangelion units are activated at once, I believe that the Lance will return to Earth of its own accord. You might say that the 'gravity' produced by the Evangelions will be so strong that it cannot resist returning."

"How can you be sure that this will work?" The second statue again.

"I cannot," Keel said, and it was the truth. "But it seems there are no better ideas, and if we are to effect the Promised Day then we must somehow bring the Lance back under our control."

There was silence from the others.

"Then," Keel said, "this meeting is adjourned."


End file.
